


The Experiment

by Maggisakura



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: 'twas a cold and drawfty February day in hell, Angst, Experimenting with writing styles, L is having a midlife crisis somewhere in Britain, M/M, Multi, RP, Resurrection, Ryuk is an absolutist, Slice of Life, Tumblr Roleplay, hopefully it's enough of a Dostojevski spiced with detective tendencies and drama, once upon a time the Shinigami King realised that fuck Ryuk Light was funny, there is no afterlife but people sure can crawl back if they make it, trying to channel my inner poet here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 20:57:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13303068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maggisakura/pseuds/Maggisakura
Summary: (I NEED FEEDBACK!)It's been around three days since Yagami Light died in the Yellow Box warehouse. L witnessed his end with the Kira task-force and after leaving with Light's watch, he considered the case done. In February's first week, a crematory is about to get a surprise when the person they're about to burn isn't quite dead yet and after calling the police, L is forced to confront Light again. That is, if Light gets over the health complications of resurrection and Matsuda isn't quite content to let the detective sweep Light away from his grieving family.





	The Experiment

**Author's Note:**

> Explanation:  
> This is the second part of a tumblr roleplay. The summary is pretty concise and tells you everything. I'm moving L but he didn't appear in this entry so I moved the NPCs. BUT I REQUIRE FEEDBACK! I've got so many fanfiction ideas in my head and it's time I put them out here but first I need to practice my writing. Please give me feedback. I need it. There are some questions at the end that you can answer if you want to. They'll help you with giving feedback. You don't need to use the questions to give feedback if you don't want to. You don't even have to use the feedback option because if you clicked this story, my summary was good enough and if you gave kudos, then wow. 
> 
> This is perfect for anyone who wishes to just dish out reviews slash burn me alive slash give me criticism et cetera. I will ALWAYS read your feedback. This will be deleted once I've got enough feedback. I don't want to leave it hanging here but you can always find it on tumblr. The point is that I need someone to tell me where I'm at right now and my sister doesn't cut it though she's been a big help. Thank you to anyone who's willing and has time to post a review.

A/N: This fully assumes that Japanese have small crematories, especially for special cases and for the police, or at least in Tokyo. If this assumption is incorrect then fuck me, send me a pm. Also send me a pm if it’s improper for a lady to work there. Also PM me if there are typos or egregious grammar mistakes. It’s been years since I last wrote anything. The text editor deleted my cursives but I believe I can get the point cross without them. Thank you for taking your time to read this.  
”…” - talking,  
‘…’ - thinking  
_______________________________________________________________  
.  
.  
.  
The rumbling of the engine and the grating of winter tires coming from Matsuda’s car as it sped along the frozen roads in Tokyo didn’t calm his mind the same way it usually did in times of restlessness and uncertainty. Aizawa sat at his right, the seat heater turned on, and didn’t utter a word. He had just snapped his written down address at Matsuda, thrust a thin piece of paper torn from a small office notebook in his hand and almost soared out of the NPA building all the way to the parking place where he had waited for Matsuda to drive for this yet unexplained trip.  
The man had commented on something about the suit he’d bought Light, or at least this is what Matsuda surmised. He didn’t remember buying any clothes for anyone else than Light’s dead body recently – not even to himself though he had gotten promoted and had received a pay rise that was due to that. 

”What was that?” Matsuda snatched a careful look at Aizawa’s direction but held his gaze on the road for the most part. A bike gang had got stuck at traffic lights in front of them but everything was peaceful. A commencing weather forecast coming from the radio was cut off when Aizawa turned the volume down. 

‘It’d have been good to hear that…,’ Matsuda thought tongue-in-cheek.

”Some goddamn joke or then this job is cursed,” Aizawa grunted and tapped the armrest just slightly off from the power window. Matsuda had time to wish that the man wouldn’t open the window due to the frosty, typical to February, strong wind blowing on the other side. The traffic lights changed their colour from red to yellow and he stepped on the gas carefully as green light lit up above the small traffic jam and Aizawa continued. ”Do you still remember when you told Mrs Yagami the news about Light?”

Matsuda swallowed in what he thought to be loud manner and fixed his collar. The scenery on the left side (grey storefronts, people walking in black and toned colours and barren trees) was suddenly worth glimpsing at and he felt he’d chosen the wrong socks for this day.

”Yes, I do remember…what of it? ”

”Mrs Yagami was supposed to visit the body today. I don’t know yet if she has been there or not but there may not be any need for that visit any longer. Light startled an employee working on him half-dead and the guy was raving on the phone afterwards. But I’m not playing around with this and we’re going to verify it. If this is an hallucination that can be blamed on long shifts then I swear I’ll sign that petition addressed to the Diet. It’s the one about cutting the working hours down – the foreign made and backed by Amnesty. Though I doubt anything will come out of it. ”

Matsuda considered the matter for a moment. It was worth noting, how Aizawa didn’t sound bitter about the issue in itself even though just yesterday a late night news report had claimed that new information about the recently deceased office worker had been disclosed and the cause of death was deemed overworking with no existing holidays. It was a clean suicide with overdose in the company toilet.  
”Hmm…suicides related to work have been on the rise for a long time,” Matsuda answered but then almost crashed against a traffic sign, barely managing to right his car’s course at the last moment. Aizawa’s frantic ’Be careful!’ rang out into deaf ears. Matsuda spluttered an apology before he properly realised what he’d heard.

”Has Light woken up?! How is that possible?” Matsuda lisped furiously and muddled his words. ”What the-? Is that what we’re going to see? Has he moved? Is he eating? What? So, has Light been resurrected?!”

”That is the impression I got at least. You really can’t chalk it up to any festivity either. New Year and Christmas passed a month ago at least. But it did damn well sound like the drunken rambling of some drunkard.”

Matsuda felt his face gradually loose its colour and becoming pale. He couldn’t outright claim the matter was impossible even if it sounded so. Shinigami, Death Notes, the afterlife, magic and battles of wit that went beyond normal person’s comprehension had, at some point, become things that embellished and gave colour to his average weekdays, and he no longer managed to convince himself that anything could be impossible. He had become a nonconformist at some point. But now they were talking about some reincarnation or soul migration nonsense that was usually reserved for people of faith. Matsuda had lost that faith a long time ago.  
The tumult that had taken over his mind was gradually silenced and somberly attitude took its place as another belief, a possibility, took root there and Matsuda felt the borders of mind broaden again and make way for a new fabrication-could-be-true concept. The opposition in his mind, however, remained unchanged in the name of detective mindset which was always prone to suspect. But it too glanced over at the disbanding of common sense dictating over the concept of death and mulled over concepts that formed a coalition, which Matsuda conveniently placed in the 'might be time to throw these out’ pile. The compost. But the resounding sound of reason persisted and was given respite when Matsuda gathered his thoughts.

It didn’t take much time at all when Matsuda had curved his car past a patch of small but distinguished storefronts and all the way to the inner court parking space which already had three cars parked neatly in a line. The civil car of the police inched towards to be a continuation to that line and he handled the handbrake as Aizawa opened the car door on his side and after shoving it close, paced briskly towards a small sidedoor which was opened by a bothered looking middle-aged man, that had a slight crouch to his back.  
'They must have heard the car tires already beforehand,’ Matsuda thought absentmindedly as he locked the car and jogged to his superior who had already initiated a conversation with the man and, for the first time, Matsuda took note of a much younger looking man who was pallid and standing close by. Though he didn’t speak much, he kept peering at them over the right shoulder of the older man.  
”We don’t party here. The boys party at home, if even there, and we’re not accustomed to having these sorts of incidents.”

”You’re speaking of resurrection right now.”

”Who said anything about that? Who do you think we are? We are not doctors! If you bring us a dead looking body with no heartbeat then of course we presume that they’re ready for the fires. Bah.” The man scratched his head and huffed.

”Th-That’s right! This just isn’t an every day occurrence!” The younger man’s eyes wouldn’t stay still and he glanced behind his back every now and then. Inside and along the crematorium hallway a third worker walked up to them. Drowsy-eyed and nose red, he looked as if he had drank too much the last night. Aizawa’s posture went stiff and the creases of his suit straightened as the back was righted. Matsuda saw from his expression that an awkward interrogation was about to ensue. He still wasn’t sure how to act when the man lost his temper, which could be quite unpleasant. He had a habit of raising his palms up with uneasy laughter slipping forth from his lips. It had never worked up to this date. The worker who had proclaimed that he’d seen Light, the terribly nervous one, seemed to resort to raising his palms to act as if a barrier between the talk and him, even though he wasn’t the one addressed.  
”So, I suppose you have had a long night too? Someone’s been drinking, haven’t they? I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how valuable my time is?” Aizawa’s voice was frigid.

”Yes, but you were the one who brought him here,” the third man remarked in a passing clear manner (Matsuda would have to refer to him as- oh wait, he had a name tag. Nakahara, in bolded black letters. Or at least he thought it was read like that).

”Your people could have performed their job better. Could have at least looked he wasn’t breathing any longer or didn’t have a passing heart failure of any kind. Good lord, his mother came here this morning. How do you explain this to her? This is a serious matter. We’ll hold the NPA responsible if he has any disablements after this ordeal.” Surprisingly well-spoken and straightforward talk coming from someone younger than Aizawa. Matsuda was half surprised, half politely irritated.  
”Now please wait a moment-”  
”He snorted!” Ah, there it came. He’d waited for something like this to happen and Matsuda pondered if it would be prudent to change his countenance to that of pallid horror the other two younger men wore when the shout came from the room that was further along the grey corridor. But he didn’t feel anything. Just slightly weird, as if an eel he thought had died when he’d eaten it was moving around his lungs and stomach. Oddly displaced in his moment of calmness and he tried to make sense of the theater. This was the same feeling, the same numbness he’d had when he’d aimed his Smith & Wesson and shot.

”O-Oi, he’s waking! Actually waking!”Someone ran into something in the room and then burst into the hallway. A woman with her eyes wide open and hair cut tastefully at her shoulders was pointed behind her. ”Go quickly, he’s really waking up! And you police sirs! What are you doing, sending us someone who’s alive! Good lord, he’s been in a coma and fridge for two days already-”

Matsuda wasn’t particularly in the mood to play along (he couldn’t feel his palms but his finger tips felt cold). He’d grown distanced and yet even that momentary disorientation had to make way when Aizawa went into the room with his controlled posture and steps knocking against the plastic floor of the small out-of-sight crematorium reserved for special cases like this.

'We should call Watari. No wait, we should call L, no, I meant Mrs Yagami-’

Matsuda took his first calm steps towards the light, past the owner, and heard the following footsteps echo in the communal silence. His stride took him over the borders of his mind, towards the past, to cross over to the other side of his humane faults, murder on the 28th of January, and the darkness inside his mind and he felt his heart turn to stone and then, along with his regulated breaths, as if a heartattack’s nails squeezed his heart lovingly. Sweaty and cold fingers squeezed his smart phone in a fist formed by his right hand, when he heard and felt Aizawa’s agitation in the air and Matsuda’s breath was caught in his throat when he strode to them where they waited.

'Please. Don’t say-, no-,’ He wouldn’t be able to look at Light in that way again, as Kira, as someone out of his mind, as a murderer-

Aizawa had stopped himself halfway to the table, taking care not to step on the spilled papers and equipment. The collar of Matsuda’s winter coat chafed at his neck along with his cheap dress shirt he’d gotten as a gift a few years back, but he didn’t raise his hand to right it. Unbidden and with nothing to tether it, his gaze fell on the little things at first; it traveled from the few dog hairs on Aizawa’s suit to stationery on the floor and finally to the occupant on the table.

Nothing moved when viewed from afar. But then he noticed one, and afterwards a second finger, twitch. Stiff, frozen sinews moved slowly on the reverse side of Light’s right hand when he moved his little finger feebly.  
”I-It can’t be true,” Matsuda spluttered quietly, unable to do much else. He had always been inept at these sort of things. The movement had introduced enough disquiet into his mind and it warred with the numbness, want to run, want to shoot and paralyzing something else. They must have looked quite witless when they stood almost shoulder to shoulder, both stiff, until Aizawa went to the table and the corp- body. The crinkling of cloth stopped when he stilled and looked down at Light’s pallid face, left hand reaching into his trouser’s pocket for a phone. The air coming out of those lungs rasped and the suit Matsuda had bought him, his last suit on which he had spend much of his savings, rose and fell along with those brittle breaths. He heard the other behind him.

Matsuda felt his heart come to live, dead nerve endings being turned on and his whole body shook as he uttered:

”Li-Light…”

**Author's Note:**

> Questions to help you (you don't necessarily need to use these, can use your own or anything really or you don't have to write anything):  
> \- Is the entry confusing?  
> \- Is it appropriate for a RP? Would you rather classify it as a novel/fanfiction style?  
> \- Is it easy to respond to this?  
> \- Anything OOC? I'm mostly talking about Matsuda since my partner gave Aizawa his current mood.  
> \- Is it difficult to follow the story? Too many "The third man looked X" and "The other two younger men looked pallid" etc? More names and identities?  
> \- Too much prose? Not enough prose? And where would you rather I direct the prose? In Matsuda's thoughts or into the intervals that describe the happenings/milieu?  
> \- Is the style alright? I tried to write things how Matsuda sees them.  
> \- Would you prefer a more detective-novel style with kind of writing describing from a list style?  
> \- Would you read this? And would you consider following this?  
> \- I wasn't able to introduce that many plot points in 2k something words. Would you rather get many plot points and devices in the first/second chapter or is it fine if I scatter them along the story? My usual chapters for fanfiction range about 9-10k words, sometimes less, sometimes more. It's all about the feeling and what I'm writing at that moment.  
> \- You can also post anything else you thought about this. 
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you for reading up till now!


End file.
